Last week, I attended the annual conference of the International Association of Career Management Professionals. I participated in a panel discussion on the Internet's impact on executive recruiting. Perhaps it's the approaching millennium, or maybe it's the alignment of the stars, but speculation about our online future is definitely the topic of the moment. Magazines and talk shows, newspaper supplements and conferences are awash with often dire prognostications about the fate of our culture, lifestyle, way of work, entertainment or grocery shopping, now that the Internet has arrived.

The moderator framed our panel's discussion around something called "disintermediation," a term only a consultant could love. It's supposed to describe the Internet's alleged role in eliminating the middleman in business transactions. For the recruiting profession, disintermediation is expected to involve the demise of executive recruiters and staffing agencies because online resources now enable employers and recruiters to source their own candidates. According to the theory, middlemen no longer control the information needed to find good candidates. As their value disappears, so will they.

The term is clearly a fashion statement for our times. Its vogue is based not on empirical evidence but on the hype bordering on hysteria that surrounds the Internet. This medium, the pundits scream, will profoundly transform everything we do, who we are and where we're going. Andy Grove, the charismatic leader of Intel Corp., predicts that newspapers will be gone in three years. Scott McNeely, the equally engaging leader of Netscape, predicts that personal computers will be gone shortly thereafter. So, get ready. According to the technology experts, disintermediation is going to change life -- or, at least, recruiting -- as we know it.

It's an interesting notion, but I don't buy it. I realize that consultants dream about such big ideas -- and their ability to generate even larger fees. However, I think consultants have a far better track record selling the idea than they do using it to predict the future. So, let me stick my neck out and offer an alternative idea: history. The stuff you read in books and see in museums. I know, "history" isn't a big, polysyllabic word. But hey, it works.

Using history to predict the future, of course, isn't my idea. For many years, Ernest May, one of my graduate-school professors, taught a course called, "Lessons of History." Although he would have never considered himself a prognosticator or popular futurist, he clearly believed that history, rather than hype, is a far better predictor of the future. And a sober review of the historical record clearly demonstrates, with few exceptions, that technological advances have seldom transformed business, or any other realm, as predicted. They've made an impact, but never at the pace or with the magnitude predicted by the unabashed technology enthusiasts.

Consider the hype about robotics, for example. Dating from the mid- to late-1950s, a steady stream of prognosticators confidently declared that assembly lines would be completely automated in a handful of years; this automation would result quickly in huge improvements in manufacturing productivity and quality and assembly-line workers would disappear. These pundits suggested robots were going to quickly change the human condition forever.

However, reality proved them wrong. It's the late 1990s and only in the last four to five years has robotics gained enough of a foothold in manufacturing to have any widespread impact on manufacturing output. Yes, there have been gains in productivity and quality, but these have been achieved only when robots were implemented in conjunction with other advances in statistical process control, inventory management and management information systems. Assembly-line workers have not disappeared; if anything, they've become more important and highly skilled for it is now their job to program, calibrate, operate and maintain all the robo-welders and wrench turners.

Here's the bottom line. No one knows exactly what impact the Internet will have on recruiting. While it certainly will be significant, if history is any guide, it will not eliminate recruiters. Nor will it achieve its full measure of influence by the day after tomorrow, the end of the millennium or in time to celebrate the arrival of 2001, the date Stanley Kubrick predicted we'd discover the real nature of computers. But that's a subject for another column. For now, our time is better spent trying to figure out how to take advantage of this glorious technology than endlessly wringing our hands over the pundits' fanciful predictions.